Hind Elhinnawy
Writer, feminist, scholar, activist, mother, daughter, woman, friend but mostly- FIGHTER!!
Hind Elhinnawy studies what happens when people challenge the rules.
Her work explores the messy, contested, and often uncomfortable spaces where gender, race, religion, power, and resistance collide. Over the years, that has meant researching Muslim women's activism, secular Muslim feminism, anti-racist struggles in higher education, feminist organising, and movements for social justice.
What unites these seemingly different interests is a fascination with voice: whose stories are heard, whose experiences are dismissed, and how individuals and communities challenge the structures that seek to define them. Through research, writing, teaching, and activism, she works at the intersection of ideas and action, driven by a belief that scholarship should not simply describe the world, but help change it.
Bio
Gender Activism I Islam(ism) I Secularism I Subaltern Voices I Affect I solidarity
I came to academia after an excruciating journey of gender-based activism in Egypt, founded on a painful personal story that has become public. I fought and won every single battle and marked a legal precedent that subsequently resulted in the reformation of personal status laws in Egypt. Yet, as a result of daring to speak against Shari’a, I was labelled “western”, “infidel”, “loose”, “reckless” and sometimes “anti-Muslim”, by colleagues, neighbours, the public as well as my own extended family; the impact of these personal experiences was so profound. I discovered the relationship between the liberation of women and the liberation of a country from a corrupt regime and a rising Islamist ideology; this was precisely what brought me to academia.
Fighting for change became a matter of life or death to me that I abandoned my former career as an interior architect and devoted my life to fighting gender-based violence in all its forms. I pursued post-graduate studies to understand and make sense of my lived experiences. I registered at the American University in Cairo for a master’s degree in gender and women’s studies. I volunteered for several NGOs, attended conferences around the Middle East, wrote blogs and opinion articles, participated in televised debates and became a serious and recognised active challenger of women’s status in Muslim countries. I vowed to continue the battle, and never stop fighting gender-based violence.
In 2016, I moved to the UK to pursue my PhD in gender and social policy. Ultimately, what I really wanted was to write, because “writing is a political act, a way of reclaiming power” (Behl, 2019, p. 88) and finding my own voice!
Contact Me
Please don’t hesitate to be in touch. I look forward to hearing from you!
Nottingham Trent University
School of Social Sciences
50 Shakespeare Street, Nottingham NG1 4FQ
+44 0115 84 82878
hind.elhinnawy@ntu.ac.uk